


Home Is Where the Heart Is

by hallowed-vessels (hasbeenhotel)



Category: Epithet Erased (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen, bliss ocean found family time!!!, except its just zora and yoomtah because I don’t want to spoil things, other characters are mentioned but not outright named
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2020-02-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:15:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22940041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hasbeenhotel/pseuds/hallowed-vessels
Summary: (But where is home when you don’t have a heart?)Zora doesn’t handle the events of Redwood Run well. Yoomtah takes it upon herself to help.
Relationships: Zora Salazar & Yoomtah Zing
Comments: 12
Kudos: 44





	Home Is Where the Heart Is

A door creaked open, spilling harsh, fluorescent light into the room, before it shut again, throwing the room back into darkness, save for the faint blue glow of the city skyline that managed to sneak past the curtains, and the sparks of electricity that flew from the girl who had entered.

The plush carpeting softened the sound of her footsteps as she moved over to the side of the bed. “Cranky ‘cause you got defeated by a cop and a rat, huh?” Yoomtah teased, clasping her hands behind her back and tilting sideways.

“G’ aw’y.” Came the muffled response, accompanied by a damp pillow being thrown at her.

Yoomtah effortlessly snatched it out of the air. “Wow. Bad enough that you _showered_? _Willingly_?” She teased.

Zora grabbed another pillow to bury her face in and groaned. “‘M gonna kill ya if you don’ leave.” The threat came out rather half-hearted, which only helped to prove Yoomtah’s point. Zora was feeling down, and she was going to help cheer her up.

She hopped up onto the bed, tugging on Zora’s arm to get her to sit up and get her face out of the pillow. “Wanna talk about it?”

“Why, so you can make fun o’ me?” Zora bit back defensively. “Tell everyone else?”

Yoomtah swung her legs back and forth like a little kid. “Oh, please. Why would I do that? I already know what happened, Boss already knows because he knows everything, and none of the others would care.”

“Then why do _you_ care?”

She clicked her tongue. “Because you’re upset and need someone to rant to! And as your coworker and bestest friend in the whole wide world-“

“You ain’t my best friend.” Zora growled, lightly shoving her.

She shoved back. “Then what am I?”

Zora considered it. “An annoyin’ little sister, at best.” She rolled her eyes- which would be hardly visible to most people in the dim lighting, -when Yoomtah snickered.

“Then, as your annoyin’ little sister,” She did an over-exaggerated impression of Zora’s accent, which got a tiny smile out of the cowgirl, “I decided to take it upon myself to come cheer you up! So you can vent to me all you want, and I won’t share a word.” She made a motion as if she locked her mouth shut and threw away the key.

Zora turned away and faced the wall with an annoyed sigh. “I failed my mission. That’s all there is to it.”

“Aaaand...?” Yoomtah continued to press. She started to run her fingers through Zora’s still-damp hair, trying to sort out the tangled mess. The two sat there in silence for several minutes. Zora was stubborn, but Yoomtah was persistent. Neither wanted to back down. “It’s alright, I’m not going to judge you.” She said softly.

“...Sun Up’s gone.” Zora finally choked out, and the floodgates opened. “That rat broke my gun! The first gun I ever built, my pride and joy, **broken**! Because he thought it’d be funny! And then he mocked me about it, he had to rub it in that _I can’t reverse something that’s done_!”

“Tsk tsk tsk. How rude.” Yoomtah commented, digging in her pocket and pulling out a handful of bobby-pins and a scrunchie. She’d gotten the majority of Zora’s hair smoothed out. As Zora continued to rant, she separated one little portion of the hair into three sections, and began to deftly weave it into a tight braid.

“It felt real good to cut off his arm, but then he had to go and put it back on!” Zora flung her hands out, knocking yet another pillow off the bed. “And then that stupid bear hug really messed me up- I had to take off my poncho for an hour so I could stop feeling like I was being crushed! And I can't stop twitching from all that electricity!”

“So shocking you as a joke wouldn’t be smart?” Yoomtah giggled, grabbing a bobby-pin and sticking it onto the end of the braid so it wouldn’t come apart while she worked on the rest of Zora’s hair.

“Zap me and not even Boss’ll be able to figure out what happened to you.” She threatened. Yoomtah laughed despite it.

“No, you won’t.” She giggled, sticking out her tongue, even though Zora couldn’t see it. “You appreciate me too much to get rid of me.”

“Don’t push your luck.” There were a few minutes of comfortable silence between them. Zora’s shoulders relaxed a little as Yoomtah kept working on her hair. “Do ya think that, maybe I deserved to lose? I did use my epithet, broke my own rules...”

“Nah, they broke your gun! Your special Sun Up. They were playing dirty.” She reasoned childishly, finishing up a third braid. “Ohhh man, once you find that rat again, he’s gonna be a goner!”

“Not even being gold will save him once I find him.” Zora agreed. Yoomtah would absolutely have to catch that on film when it happened. It would be the perfect showcase of what happens to people who try to trick Bliss Ocean! “I did kinda, enjoy it, almost?”

She let out a questioning hum, and undid what she’d done on the fourth braid, redoing it to be tighter.

“Like, people don’t usually _fight back_. All my hunts are just spineless worms who hide under their mama’s kitchen table. The cops don’t try to set a challenge, and I just plow ‘em down in a second. But the rat and his cop turned my own game against me! I can respect that.”

“It wasn’t a fair fight, though. Two verses one isn’t fair.” Never mind the fact that both of them knew that Zora could probably plow down a hundred men without touching her epithet, if she wanted to. “If you ever need someone to come and help even the scores, I’m your girl!” She jabbed a bobby-pin into the end of the braid and started on the next.

“Good to know that someone here is reliable.” She snarked, then sighed. “The cop lady took what was left of Sun Up, too, so I cain’t even **try** to repair it. I know Boss could probably pull some strings and get it back, but that’d look real suspicious. I’ll have to make a new one.”

“Be sure to make it rat-proof.”

“Har-dee-har-har. Very funny- quit yanking!”

“Sorry!” Yoomtah apologized, not feeling sorry at all as she worked on the last part of Zora’s hair. “I’m almost done.”

“You’d better be, or else my new gun’s gonna be named Robot Killer. You know I hate havin’ people touch my hair.”

“Liiiiaaaaar!” She giggled, gathering up the six damp braids. “You love it, I know you do. Besides, Robot Killer and Sun Down don’t sound any good together. You should call it, like, Crepuscule or Sun Up Jr. or something. Make it fit your aesthetic.” She started to weave the braids together into a larger, six strand braid.

“Ugh. No.” Zora whistled a few notes of a song, thinking. “Maybe I should make two new ones, so Sun Up ain’t gettin’ replaced.” She mused.

Yoomtah twisted the scrunchie around the end of the braid, and pulled out the bobby-pins. “Let me know if you want a hand with making those.” She offered, taking a moment to admire her work. “Don’t try to unbraid it on your own this time, m’kay?”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” She mumbled. “Night, Yooms. Thanks for doin’ my hair and lettin’ me talk.”

“Anytime! We’re a family, we gotta look out for each other. Night-night, you horrible, stinky cowgirl. I’ll see you in the morning.” She chirped affectionately and zipped out of the room, shutting the door behind her.

Another errand well taken care of. Well, not really an errand or a chore- cheering up her family was a task she was always happy to do!

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve literally had this idea since episode 7 aired on VRV for the first time.... and I just started writing it two days ago. It was meant to be like 200 words but I don’t know how to keep things short so!
> 
> Also I wrote like 90% of this while I was very heavily disassociating and haven’t proofread it so I can’t promise it’s coherent.


End file.
